[Capt. Aaron Portway]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

I just got into town an hour or so ago. Pastor Deacon Fred had me fly him to Key West today. He needed to minister to a big game fisherman and his deckhands.

He asked me to come along with him on the boat, in case he needed any assistance. Of course Pastor Deacon Fred handled the ministering with his usual skill, but right in the middle of his sermon about Jonah, something crashed one of the outrigger lines.

Pastor of course jumped on the rod and slammed the hooks into the unseen fish! Suddenly, a huge black marlin exploded out of the water! I helped strap him into the fighting chair and the battle was on!

It lasted nearly three hours! All the while, as he fought the mighty fish, the Pastor never stopped his sermon! He even compared the battle with the marlin with our daily battles with Satan. He is such a pro!

Eventually, he bested the mighty sea beast. At the docks, the marlin weighed in at just over 1100 lbs. Not a record, but a respectable catch certainly. Pastor plans on having the mounted fish placed in his inner office, on the wall opposite the snow leopard he shot in Nepal last year.

I have to thank all the True Christians™ who defended my good name while I was away today. I know it was only some deluded UT, but it fills my heart with Jesus to know that my True Christian™ brothers "have my back" as they say on the "street".

[Jimmy C Lombardo]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

In The Beginning, Man Created God
“The unknown is always either feared or worshiped.”
- Unknown Contextomy
If you are a theist and you’re reading this I would say with much confidence that you don’t worship Zeus, or Thor, or any of the ancient gods from the early civilizations of man. Why? Why were these ideas dismissed as time went on? The explanation is staring you in the face. It was because science has steadily overturned the superstitions of these religions. Such as why there are changes in the seasons, or the currents in the ocean. Both of which had been explained by religious belief in Greek mythology. Now we have an explanation for both of these. Why? Because of science, and its progression in steadily filling in the holes of the unknown. Unlike religion, science doesn’t stare wide-eyed at the unknown and say “Well, God must have done it.” Science takes the unknown and puts it to the test.

Next we’ll start off with the architecture of the human mind, and the pieces that generate religious belief. An organism is an integrated collection of problem solving devices, adaptations if you want to call them that, that were shaped by natural selection over evolutionary time to promote, in some specific way, the survival of genes that directed their construction. The heart solves the problem of pumping blood, hemoglobin solves the problem of transporting oxygen, the lungs solve the problem of extracting oxygen from the air. These statements above can also be put into perspective and looked at about the human mind. The mind is nature’s computer, which has evolved through millions of years, and through the common ancestors of H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis, that supports human intelligence. These problem solvers spur off superstition as a by-product. Now, what is a by-product? I’ll give you an example: Reading and Writing. None of us have reading or writing modules in our brains. It’s a by-product of fine motor-skills, vision, and the ability to produce complex thought. Reading and Writing is something that we can do because our minds have the indirect ability to complete these tasks. Religion is simply an artifact of our ability to imagine alternate social worlds, and our desire to conquer the unknown. However, the primitive cavemen didn’t have any explanation for how they got there, so they imagined that some higher being did it, the highest ideal, if you will.

Religion argues with science by generally saying “The chance that life could be supported without a designer is too small, or impossible. And that it had to have been God that created life.” Well, say somehow there were no planets, we just drifted in space, but space had air, the strong force, and the weak force. And we conducted our lives without gravity, and we knew how to do this because we had adapted to do so over time. It is quite obvious that you don’t need gravity to survive, obviously it isn’t as healthy has having gravity, but you can survive it. Plus you have to take in to account that if humans had been evolved that way their bodies would be much more accustomed to living without gravity. It is a simple fact that humans could live without gravity, as they do on trips to the moon, and on manned-observation satellites. I just took out 1 of the 3 fundamental interactions, and human life could still be supported.

Next we’ll go into intuitive reasoning, something which everyone has. An example of this would be: you could mistake a shadow for a burglar. But you would never mistake a burglar for a shadow. This is what we would call Minimally Counterintuitive Worlds, or MCI’s. This is an optimal compromise between the interesting, and the expected. And it gives us attention arresting, and memorable thoughts. Let me illustrate for you: If I were to tell you a tree could do your taxes, reprogram your computer, and do you laundry, you would undoubtedly not believe me. However, if I tell you that the same tree, on the night of a full moon, will hear your wishes and grant them, you might me more vulnerable to believing me. All supernatural templates have these counterintuitive physical properties, such as God is just a guy, only with some alterations, and you fill in the blanks without thinking about it. With it there’s no violation of basic human assumption. It may have some counterintuitive biology, such as the virgin birth in Christianity, but other than that, Mary was otherwise, just a normal person. Possibly some counterintuitive psychology, such as God knows what I’m thinking. But if God were to know what I am thinking, then why would I have to pray to him? Why? Because those basic assumptions about humanness are all still intact. That’s why you start to believe it, and later ends up sticking in your head. You can look at any religious system, and it will always fit this model.

Moral Feeling Systems: Obviously religion just attacks these, there’s no denying it. Religion recruits the feelings of these to lend plausibility to a god. It uses these moral systems to link commitment mechanisms. And religious morality adds morally competent witness to one’s actions. There is a difference, in my opinion to morality and religious dogma though. Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what we are told. Religious dogma is doing what we are told, regardless of what is right. Something related to this is altruistic punishment, or the willingness to punish social cheats at a cost to ourselves. This is again a cognitive mechanism that all of us have. Suicide terrorism, although an extreme way of doing it, is an example of this.

Religious Rituals: these arise from threat response systems. If you’re a Christian, you obviously don’t want to go to hell. So you take part in the ritual of baptism, or the Sabbath. Both of which are compelling and rigidly scripted. Usually religious rituals have to do with cleansing or order. These religious rituals enable and elicit scrutiny of hard-to-fake signals of commitment. It helps the person partaking in the religious rituals communicate their intentions. Not to mention that they create hope, solace, excite, and entertain the mind. They also exploit the Gestalt Law of the Whole. An example of this would be that if you see a shape of a V of birds flying in the air, you mainly see the V. You don’t really pay much attention to the individual birds. It’s the same with religious groups. If a whole congregation of people participate in the same ritual, then it entices you to become more active in what is going on. Religion exploits this by creating attention arresting, memorable, and often intimidating sights.

More cognitive mechanisms that help us imagine God is confirmation bias, which is just the fact that you notice data that fits your beliefs. Such as “Mere” familiarity, which is similar to confirmation bias.
Children today are what keeps religion growing. Parents spoon-feed their children superstition and make it into the unshakable truth they see it as when they become adults. Children should be taught about ALL religions, and philosophies, and then be allowed to make their own decision. Children will blindly accept anything their parents tell them is true. This is obviously because they are still in a phase of mental expansion and growth. They do not have the capacity to question things as large as religion. Parents commonly teach and label children with their own mythology. Virtually all adults agree that children don’t have the intellectual capability to comprehend politics, or to know what party they stand for. Why, then, do we label our children with our view on the origin of life? Children absorb everything they hear, and it is child abuse to cherry pick certain morals from religious texts such as the bible and force them down a child’s throat, while ignoring other texts and phrases from the same and different views.

Overall, religious belief is a by-product used to entertain the mind. It has virtually no purpose in life and should not control people’s lives. Science has constantly torn down religious superstition and replaced it with either fact or a hypothesis based on evidence. Science and religion cannot live together when religion attempts to laugh in the face of science and ignore its discoveries. There is simply no such thing as “Creation Science” when creationism mocks science in almost every way. It’s real vs. fake, and only one side has evidence.

You wasted your time kid. No, really. You have. I bet you skipped yer homework so you could write that.

[WiseAss]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

You wasted your time kid. No, really. You have. I bet you skipped yer homework so you could write that.

And I'm sure you wasted your time too.
I'm sure you could have been going through your daily routine of sodomizing your son and been done already.

[Jimmy C Lombardo]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

We aint Catholic.

[WiseAss]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

We aint Catholic.

You people actually got something right this time.
You are something much, much worse than Catholic.
You are an ignorant, imbred, redneck who doesn't have a clear understanding of the world in which we live.

[Wide-Open]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

You are something much, much worse than Catholic.

Don't be silly, few things are worse than cathlycks!

You are an ignorant, imbred, redneck who doesn't have a clear understanding of the world in which we live.

Oh dear. Jumping to conclusions aren't we?
I thought atheists believed that so called "logic" goes out of the window when you get mad and insulting.

You aren't making any friends here this way. Could you at least stay polite? Your anger does not impress, nor does it help your case.

[WiseAss]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

Don't be silly, few things are worse than cathlycks!



Oh dear. Jumping to conclusions aren't we?
I thought atheists believed that so called "logic" goes out of the window when you get mad and insulting.

You aren't making any friends here this way. Could you at least stay polite? Your anger does not impress, nor does it help your case.

I will not be polite when your views are racist, sexist, and almost offensive in every possible way. A

I have not jumped to conclusions, I have read quite a few of his posts and he is what I previously stated.

I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to tell you people that you're wrong.

[Pastor Ezekiel]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

I will not be polite when your views are racist, sexist, and almost offensive in every possible way. A

I have not jumped to conclusions, I have read quite a few of his posts and he is what I previously stated.

I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to tell you people that you're wrong.

You are unwelcome, univited and unsaved. God tells us to stay clear of scum like you.

"Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds" -- 2 John 1:9-11

[Wide-Open]

Re: In The Beginning, Man Created God

I will not be polite when your views are racist, sexist, and almost offensive in every possible way.

Friend, we follow the whole Bible, not just bits and pieces that sound nice. Back in my unsaved days, when I was a sinning atheist, I used to think racism and sexism were utterly vile. Yet, when I became Saved(R), I realised that you either take the whole Bible serious, or nothing. Our God is a pretty vicious and moody God, and he commands us to stone homersexurals and unruly children. He smote quite a few people and populations himself.

Saying that women probably have no souls is not sexism: it is what our Lord tells us. We follow EVERY rule, not just the ones that please us (or you). If you have a problem with that, you have to take it up with God himself. We didn't write the Bible, God did.

I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to tell you people that you're wrong.

And in your experience, going on a forum telling people "YOU ARE WRONG" is a very effective way of communication?

Do you want me to post "You are all wrong and have no morals" on Dawkins' forum? I doubt that they would all go "blimey, he's right you know."